Feeling frugal

Frugality runs in my family. We all have a tendency to spend money sensibly and sparingly. We're not the sort to go on wild gambling sprees or buy luxury cars or go on round-the-world cruises.

Whatever I'm buying, I'll always look for a bargain. I steer away from designer clothes with absurdly high price tags. I don't buy fashionable clothes that will probably be out of fashion in six months' time. I don't buy fancy expensive furniture that was recommended in some magazine.

Of course there are some exceptions. I'll pay over the odds for a high-quality pair of shoes. I'll shell out a hefty sum for a foreign holiday. I'll dig deep for a really wonderful original painting.

But on the whole I don't splash my money around. I'm not an impulse buyer and I shop strictly for what I want. I don't go in for retail therapy and I don't go in for flashy purchases like jewellery or mountain bikes or upmarket sound systems. My needs are modest.

My mum always prided herself on her frugality, which got more extreme as she got older. She couldn't resist a special offer at the supermarket, or a cut-price holiday deal, or a dirt-cheap winter jacket. Her frugality was a bit of an illusion though, as she was also a hoarder and had bought so many "bargains" that her flat was completely stuffed with them.

But whenever I saw her, she would always tell me gleefully of her latest bit of penny-pinching, and how on-the-ball she had been. All of which was totally unnecessary because she was very well-off, but liked to prove she was a canny shopper who was never conned into wasting money.

I think any sign of luxury actually horrified her.

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For those of you who've read about the Northern Ireland rioting and might be wondering if Jenny and I are safe, yes we're perfectly safe. The mayhem in west Belfast doesn't affect us because we live seven miles away in east Belfast. So worry not!

Sweatshop bargains

Like most people, I like to get things cut-price rather than forking out the maximum. But I'm also aware that my bargain shirt or pair of jeans may be at someone else's expense.

And not just in grimy sweatshops on the other side of the world. There are plenty of sweatshops right here in the UK where people labour twelve hours a day to churn out cheap clothes for chains like Primark.

People flock to Primark for their unbelievably low prices, a fraction of what you'd usually expect, and they seldom ask themselves how such rock-bottom prices are possible.

A BBC programme put the finger on TNS knitwear in Manchester where, it's claimed, employees work up to twelve hours a day seven days a week for as little as £3.50 an hour - about half the national minimum wage. Some of the workers are also said to be illegal and not entitled to work.

Primark denies all the claims, but the BBC undercover reporter who got a job there wasn't asked about her legal status and was offered just £3.50 an hour.

There was no heating in her work area and employees had their coats on in freezing temperatures. The work was physically exhausting amid ear-splitting noise. Employees said they were under constant pressure to meet orders.

There are plenty more sweatshops just like that around Britain, which the ordinary shop customer knows nothing about. The grim reality is concealed behind glossy advertising and prominent claims that factory working conditions are carefully monitored. In fact monitoring is usually erratic and superficial and allows Victorian conditions to continue unabated.

But what can the average shopper do about it? Even if I insisted on paying the realistic price for clothing (£50 for a pair of jeans?), there's no guarantee the extra cash would end up in the pockets of the workers. It's just as likely it would turn into a bigger profit for the companies or fatter salaries for the owners.

Unless there were strict controls over where all that extra income went, the sweatshops wouldn't necessarily disappear.

Perhaps we should demand the right to inspect the factories where our clothes are made and see just how their employees are treated. An army of beady-eyed customers invading these hidden grindstones would bring a few drastic changes.
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I see that even using the internet adds to global warming. Just two Google searches are the equivalent of boiling a kettle. Ye Gods, what do I do now? Close down my blog? Bin my computer?

Bargain hunters

Don't we all love a good bargain? I'll say. The people of Northern Ireland are fanatical bargain seekers, much more than elsewhere. They don't have any of that residual guilt about paying the proper price and protecting the workers' interests. If it's cheaper than it should be, they want it - now. They have an inbuilt radar that detects special offers and introductory discounts at five miles, and they come flocking in.

They like nothing better than arriving on someone's doorstep and saying "Guess how much I paid?" Then there'll be ten minutes of a blow-by-blow account of how they got this amount knocked off the two weeks in Turkey, then the special deal on the car hire, then the upgrade on the flight, then the special luxury suite at the hotel, and all thanks to this friend of a friend of an uncle who's got these amazing connections and anytime you want a good holiday package just say the word and he'll do the same for you, why pay the full price like all those poor mugs in the High Street, it's just a big rip-off, those travel agencies must be laughing all the way to the bank, it's not what you know, it's who you know.... (I could go on)

That's the other thing. People love to boast about their bargains, but they're not gloating, it's not one-upmanship. They want to share their good fortune with you and they want you to have a bit of it as well. That's still very much the Northern Ireland way - we all scratch each other's backs, do each other favours, in one big mutual leg-up that keeps us all afloat.

Now that Belfast is getting more prosperous and cosmopolitan, there's a bit more of the hard-bitten, commercial, take it or leave it approach creeping in, but by and large we haven't yet succumbed to the impersonal product-shifting that pervades other cities. Business, for us, is still just part and parcel of our personal relationships (which is why snubbing or insulting people is a dangerous move - it might come back to haunt you when you're setting up that lucrative deal in a few years' time).

But yes, people here latch on to bargains like homing pigeons. Even the sedate, dignified, well-heeled gentry of suburban Malone can be seen elbowing their way through the Sprucefield* hordes to get their hands on some tantalising cut-price offering. No one wants to be left out of this essential social ritual.

*a huge shopping centre in Lisburn, soon to get Ireland's first John Lewis.